Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he wants to build a society in which “all women can shine.” But as Daigo Matsui graphically shows in his new film “Japanese Girls Never Die,” women in Japan are still living in a male-dominated society that, in everything from unequal pay to blatant sexual harassment, serves as a de facto black-out curtain.
Based on a 2013 novel of the same title by Mariko Yamauchi, the film is less a didactic feminist manifesto than a fizzy mix of generational drama and dystopian fantasy, with the look and pace of a shot-on-the-fly documentary. It’s a mix Matsui also used in “Wonderful World End” (2015), a music-video-based film screened at last year’s Berlin film festival, and “Our Huff and Puff Journey” (Watashitachi no Haa Haa, 2015), a road movie with four rambunctious teen heroines.
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